After a slow start, and a slow run up the hill, the body said, Alright, enough nonsense, let’s go. And so off we ran, pushing beyond the comfortable limit of breath, and then beyond again and again, finding exhilaration at each new level, never once needing to open the mouth. See? You thought you had forgotten. Forty-seven degrees. Stars and clouds. The cool, rainy weather continues. I’ve been wearing them […]
Cherry blossoms — a little girl adds them to her make-believe soup. . [ 1413 ]
Let’s leave behind a few clay pots and a worn out pair of sandals. As for dreams and thoughts, let’s keep them guessing. They will be anyway: Religion, music, poetry, science — cathedrals, symphonies, books — Fragments that represent, but never quite make, the whole. Our little daughter said it best with the very first word she spoke: Light. She was nine months old. And when she was seven, She […]
A slow run in the cold starry hour before dawn — up the hill, past the old couple’s crocuses still closed for the night, looking like color specialty shops where love models scarves and little boys wonder about their mother’s soft moles — to the corner, and then an eastward turn, ’neath streetlights that die as they burn — proud and solemn, trees without arms — without arms, without arms, […]
If I had no knowledge of clocks and calendars, how old would I be? If there were no one to tell me, would I be any age at all? But I do know. And since I do, I ask myself how this knowledge has shaped me. Has it limited my understanding? Has it expanded it? Has it done neither, or both? Moreover, I did not seek this knowledge. Like so […]
He had a perfect way of saying the desert had been crossed: Where water needs the flowers, we’re no longer lost. And there we laid him; and here grows the moss. “Where Water Needs the Flowers” Recently Banned Literature, April 11, 2014 . Copper In Your Palm Air so heavy with pollen and perfume, you wear it home. Comb it into the bathroom sink. Some settles on the lacy fern. […]
The end of the world is a strange and beautiful place. It keeps growing, and it keeps ending. And as it ends, it gives birth to countless new beginnings. Eyes open, eyes close, eyes open again. Galaxies and atoms. Oceans and tufts of grass. A little boy’s pockets turned inside out for the wash. What he remembers. What he loses. What he collects. Where have you been? his kind mother […]
Some of us are armed with guns, others with guitars, paintbrushes, and poems. Love, though, is not armed, and it remains the strongest, tenderest, wisest, most patient, pliant force of all. Is there a better way to follow? Does one need politics and religion in order to live peacefully and to act with love? No. And yet we have created a world in which nearly all of us are armed […]
As rapidly as the cedar is growing, it will be necessary before long to walk under it instead of around. We are already walking under the pine at the opposite end of the house. It too is young. Little by little, the trees are creating their own climates and conditions. For instance, the pine is already able to slow the progress of passing clouds, while the tips of the cedar […]
Sometimes, when the bow is not taut, the arrow flies much farther. The Living and the Dead A pair of starlings are feasting on something in the maple tree outside my window. The tree has just begun to bloom. Its larger branches are covered with moss, some of it old, much of it new. The birds have found something to eat in the moss — newly hatched insects, or […]
William Michaelian 